Jackie Stewart Interview

F1 In The '60s: A "Serial Death Race"

In all the major race series, not just F1, death rates have come down despite an enormous increase in speeds. I know you have been a big champion of safety.

Jackie Stewart: I happen to be one of the people who forced safety down the throats of track owners and car manufacturers. Track medical facilities were pathetic. We were losing an immense number of drivers. The batting average you’d be interested in is that from 1968 to 1973 -- my “big” years, if you will. If you raced [continuously], you would have had a 2-in-3 chance of dying. It was becoming just a saga. It was like a General Hospital, a serial death program. We lost far too many people. We had to change the tracks to make them safer, include runoff areas and proper deformable structures like safer barrier walls. We changed the cars too; the cockpits are much stronger now -- a cocoon of safety for the driver. The new materials we wear for fireproofing, the helmet protection and the HANS device -- an American invention to save neck and back injuries -- all have helped. I would suggest that the medical facilities now at an F1 Grand Prix track are better than any university or general hospital in any city in the world for that particular weekend, because they are focused on the type of injures we expect: life-threatening. Now we are probably the best risk-management business I know, including aerospace or anything else.

In 1982, during live qualifying at Indianapolis, you were announcing when Gordon Smiley had his horrific crash in turn three. How do you deal with something like that in the broadcast booth?

JS: Well, I think that’s the most difficult thing a commentator can be faced with. I was lucky. I was working with fantastically skilled people. I learned anything and everything from the late, great Jim McKay, host of Wide World of Sports, and lots of other good ones that went with him. When you see an impact like that, maybe as a racing driver it’s a little easier. You know the gravity of the accident; you sometimes have felt it, have come this close to death. Life is very easily taken at those speeds. When I saw that one, it was a question of how long the cameras were left on the picture. What do you see? Is it a time to be silent or a time to say "where there’s life, there’s hope"? But you don’t know whether there’s life at that time, because the impact is so big when you hit a concrete wall. You don’t know whether the driver’s been rendered unconscious and his seat belts and protective mechanism that the car has within it -- the survival cell that was developing at that time -- was able to contain the accident with life being retained. And in that particular case it wasn’t, and it was a difficult one to deal with.

Did you ever train formally for broadcasting? You seem such a natural.

JS: No, not at all. When I retired from motor racing as a driver, I was only 34 years of age and had just burned out, getting more aggravation than satisfaction. Roone Arledge put me under contract at ABC when he created the color commentator. I was one of the early ones. Because I‘ve got a high-pitched voice, I think it got through the sound of all those racing engines. So my voice probably became better known than my face, thank God, on television. What everybody tells me, the thing they remember most, is me saying, “It’s a very good day for motor racing.” I guess because I had such a passion for the sport -- still have, even though I’m not interested, obviously, in driving anymore -- that came across. I was with Wide World of Sports for 15 years -- and ABC were the leaders of the world in sports at the time. It was a very good part of my life.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but, as a business, F1 racing is one of the world's biggest sports?

JS: Formula 1 is by far the largest capital investment sport in the world -- billions of dollars. The top teams spend $200 million to $300 million per year, and there are a dozen or so teams. By television audience, F1 is the largest sport in the world on an annual basis. The Summer Olympics and the soccer World Cup may be bigger, but they are only every four years. We, by far, have more multinational corporation investors in F1 than in any other sport. And they need a global marketplace. That’s why I disagree when [F1 CEO] Bernie Ecclestone said he doesn’t need America. That’s wrong. Ferrari’s biggest market, for example, is in North America.

What does F1 need to do to get popular in America?

JS: Formula 1 will never be big in America, if you don’t mind me saying so, because you are so domestic: football, basketball, baseball, and, in some parts of America, ice hockey. NASCAR is a domestic American sport with domestic American drivers. It used to be only the Deep South. That’s changed, and now there are drivers from all over the place. Jeff Gordon is an Indiana boy, for example. But it is still domestic. There are hardly any international drivers. Now go to Indianapolis for the 500, and you will see the field is filled with international drivers coming over with international money to finance their rides in single-seaters. When I was working with Wide World of Sports, Mario Andretti -- who I was racing against before I retired -- was winning his world championship. There was a bigger interest in F1 in America then because he is American. Now if his grandson, Marco, who lost the [2006] Indy 500 by inches, transferred to F1, he could be a catalyst. He's American, and the Andretti name is widely known around the world. We need something like that.

In your day, star athletes didn't make nearly the money they do now. Michael Schumacher, at his peak, was always near the top of athlete-earnings lists, making an estimated $80 million annually all-inclusive. Is that too much?

JS: Well, that’s what the market pays. And whether you’re an athlete or a CEO, you get what the market can afford. If it perceives that paying you that amount is going to provide results -- whether it’s on the stock price or in the arena of sport -- then you will get paid. So it’s not just the demands of athletes or CEOs; it’s market forces.

James M. Clash, author of Forbes To The Limits (John Wiley and Sons, 2003), can be contacted at: jclash@explorers.org.